Pain Conditions
Low back pain
Your lower back helps support the weight of your upper body and enables you to move your trunk and control your legs.
Your lumbar (lower) spine connects your upper back to your pelvis. It’s a complex structure involving 5 bony vertebrae, discs, joints, ligaments, nerves and muscles.
Low back pain can originate from a number of structures or joints in the lower spine. Pain may also come if your spinal nerves have been injured or compressed. Nerve-related (neuropathic) pain may also involve weakness or other changes in sensation.
Axxon Pain’s doctors will use images from X-rays, CT scans or MRIs alongside clinical skill to determine the cause of your pain and create a treatment plan to address it.
Neck pain
Your neck (or cervical spine) is a small, rather delicate column that supports the weight of your head, enables complex movements and protects your spinal cord as it travels from your brain to the rest of your body.
Neck pain may be sharp or aching and can happen if the structures in your neck have become irritated or inflamed due to an underlying condition, posture or some other cause.
Diagnosis relies on clinical assessment, interpretation of imaging and response to procedures to determine the best strategy in pain management.
Spine pain despite surgery (failed back surgery syndrome)
When you’ve gone through surgery to heal your back, it can be deeply distressing to discover that the pain is still there.
Sometimes, back pain persists despite one or more surgeries on the spine. This may happen even if surgery has been otherwise completely successful. Why? The reasons can be complex and are often poorly understood.
Axxon Pain Medicine can help you find a way through at this point. Our experienced clinicians will undertake a comprehensive review of your history and ongoing symptoms.
Then we’ll optimise your pain management, which may include medications, exercise and psychological coping strategies.
Finally, we’ll evaluate the potential role of further treatments such as spinal cord stimulation (neuromodulation) or intrathecal drug therapy (targeted drug delivery).
Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS)
Complex regional pain syndrome is a type of chronic pain usually affecting an arm, leg or hand. It may be triggered by trauma like a fracture or nerve injury or may appear seemingly out of nowhere.
With CRPS, your body’s reaction to an injury or problem becomes much stronger than is really necessary. Light touch may cause intense pain, for example.
The condition is diagnosed by a set of clinical criteria called the Budapest Criteria.
While there is no specific cure, early and aggressive diagnosis and treatment gives the best chance of a positive outcome. Treatments include medications, surgery, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and psychology. Severe CRPS may warrant treatments such as ketamine infusions or spinal cord stimulation.
Work related injury
Work-related injuries unfortunately remain common. Axxon Pain Medicine works closely with workcover and medico-legal practices to try to get the best outcome for injured workers.
Our aim in treating a work-related injury is to help you return to your previous level of function and work. We assess each case independently, diagnosing and treating work-related pain conditions and drawing on surgical and rehabilitation expertise.
Painful neuropathies
Nerve pain can be severe, often feeling like an electrical or burning sensation. It can be caused by a specific nerve injury or damage to multiple nerves due to diabetes or some diseases of the immune system.
Pain may be the only symptom or you may also experience related symptoms like weakness or numbness along the path of an affected nerve. Treatment can involve medications, or interventions such as nerve blocks or pulsed radiofrequency neurotomy. Severe cases may warrant use of an intrathecal drug delivery system or a spinal cord stimulator.
Chronic Hip or knee pain
Hips and knees bear the body’s weight and endure the wear and tear of numerous repeated movements over the course of your life.
Risk factors for developing hip and knee pain include your age, family history, lifestyle and presence of conditions like arthritis.
Once hip and knee pain has begun, it often progresses. That’s because hip and knee pain alters your body’s biomechanics, often triggering pain in other areas like your feet or lower back. Joint replacement surgery may be required if degenerative changes become severe.
There are many options for effective management and treatment to delay or avoid the need for surgery. Interventions such as radiofrequency neurotomy help to decrease pain in the joint. Structured rehabilitation helps to normalise the biomechanical changes and extends the function and durability of the joint. These measures are also employed to reduce persistent pain following joint replacement surgery.
Shoulder Pain
Your shoulder joint is similar to a golf ball sitting on a golf tee. It’s held in place by ligaments which tend to fray and weaken with age. Steroid injections can be helpful to relieve pain and improve movement in and around the joint.
More persistent pain can be treated by interventions to decrease the sensitivity of the nerve which carries pain from the shoulder. These interventions can be with either pulsed radiofrequency neurotomy or, in severe cases, a peripheral nerve stimulator.
Groin pain
In athletes, the most common source of groin pain is a muscle, tendon or ligament injury. You may also develop groin pain due to trapped nerves or after hernia surgery. If that happens, treatment involves isolating the nerve causing the pain then targeting it.
Steroid injections and local anaesthetic help, both by confirming which nerve is responsible and giving some relief from the pain. In some cases, further treatments such as pulsed radiofrequency neurotomy, surgery or a peripheral nerve stimulator are required to get good long-term control of the pain.
Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia may involve neurological (nerve) changes that make your body’s pain system overly sensitive.
As we learn more about how the body adapts and evolves to manage pain, we are learning better ways to manage fibromyalgia by helping your pain system to dial down its sensitivity.
Fibromyalgia treatment initially focuses on decreasing symptoms with medications, interventions and other therapies. Once the symptoms have eased, we can help retrain the pain sensing system to be less reactive. This leads to improved physical and mental symptoms and improved function.
Headaches
Headache is a complex symptom, which may feel mild to catastrophic depending on its severity.
There are many different types of headache with different underlying causes. Initially, we aim to rule out potentially serious causes. Once that’s done, we work with your neurologist or GP to ease your symptoms.
Cervicogenic headaches are felt in your head but originate in your neck. Often, treating the upper neck, including the nerves which run to the temples, can dramatically improve headache symptoms. Other treatments include botulinum toxin, medications, and in some cases use of a spinal cord or peripheral nerve stimulator.
Cancer pain
Cancer, and common treatments for it like chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, cause pain and suffering which limits your ability to engage in activities.
An experienced pain management team can dramatically improve your quality of life. We may use targeted treatments to stop single or groups of nerves from sending pain signals. Intrathecal pumps can reduce the amount of medication required for pain relief by delivering the drug directly to the nervous system.